


While It Lasts

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus/Declan, Magnus/Will (one-sided).  A little bittersweet taste of Declan's backstory and his first real mission with the Sanctuary network.  Small cameo by Watson.  Spoilers for "Kali" and "Firewall."  Present-day portions are set during "Firewall."  Originally posted at Sanctuaryfiction.net</p>
            </blockquote>





	While It Lasts

London, 1998

“Best to stay away from that one, Declan. She’s trouble all around.”

Declan had only been working with the Sanctuary and with the esteemed Dr. Watson for a little shy of two months and already any experience he thought he had, field or otherwise, had been proven to be completely bollocks when it came to the day to day operations within the network. Still, he was quick, always had been, and it had proven enough to catch Watson’s eye and land him the job of a lifetime.

He’d been content to bury himself with the inner workings of the world cloistered in dark alleys and deep jungles, days alternating between high-speed chases and gunfights with the more staid days like today, he and Watson settled deep in the lab with words and tea only exchanged every few hours or so. Declan wasn’t sure what he liked best: getting to show off his ex-military skills or getting to show off the impressive intellect behind them, but he knew he was still leagues behind Watson. He had a lot to learn, apparently.

“Which? The teenager or her mother? Don’t know what kind of bloke you take me for, but I like them old enough to know who The Clash are without asking her mother.”

Watson was giving him a keen look and Declan tipped his head down, content to bury himself in chemical structures for the time being. That’d been his bread and butter, chemistry, and it was much easier to puzzle over hydrogen bonding than stand Watson’s gaze for any longer than necessary. That man could deduce your mother’s maiden name from a piece of lint on your scarf and make you feel about two inches tall while he did so. Not the sort of scrutiny Declan wanted in his personal life, not right now.

“She’s my dearest friend,” Watson continued, apparently trying a different tack. Declan murmured an agreement under his breath, the chemical analysis pushed to the back of his mind for a moment while Helen Magnus took a starring role. All in all, not necessarily a bad thing, but a distraction Declan really didn’t need when Watson was here to read every tell he had and some he didn’t know about to boot.

She’d arrived the day before, sullen teenage daughter in tow, to help identify an Abnormal they’d only tracked based on the copious amounts of venom it’d been leaving around the halls of the UK Sanctuary. Declan knew about Magnus in theory, knew she and her father had started the network and operated out of “home office” in Old City, but he hadn’t ever seen the woman outside of a photograph on Watson’s desk. Said photograph didn’t do her justice, given she’d been blonde and dressed in the height of Victorian fashion and the woman who’d blown in from a late summer storm was anything but.

She was as dark as the daughter was fair, messy curls hanging around her face and bright, quick blue eyes scanning and assessing everything. She might not have unnerved him as much as Watson, but it was damn close, and Declan wasn’t sure he could handle the two of them in a room together. But, teenager sent off to her room (Ashley, she’d called her) and luggage put away, he had ended up in Watson’s private study drinking port with one of the most brilliant women he’d ever met. He’d never seen anyone keep up with Watson, much less go toe to toe with him, and Declan had to admire that.

He was brought back to the present by someone clearing their throat and fresh tea at his elbow. Magnus was there again and Watson was nowhere to be found. The bastard. Not only had the attraction he felt for Magnus garnered Watson’s notice, it’d caught her interest as well. She poured a cup of tea for both of them and perched on Watson’s vacated stool, smile enigmatic but no less charming.

“James said you needed my help with the analysis? He never had a head for chemistry. All languages, that one, and his little gadgets. I guess we all have our strong suits.”

Declan nodded woodenly, pushing the first of a ream of computer printouts from the chromatograph. “Nothing I can’t crack in a few days, but if you can spare me the effort I’ll treat you to dinner and drinks." He paired it with a wide grin and he was surprised (and pleased) to see it returned, dimple flashing in her cheek before she bent her head to work.

Unlike Watson, who occasionally punctured the silence with a well-timed comment, Magnus was completely silent as she worked, lips moving ever so slightly as she read. When she spoke, it was only because she’d made some breakthrough and her eyes were bright with the light of discovery when she finally lifted her head and waved the printout with hers and his notes scattered across it.

“Basilisk, Declan. I haven’t seen one for a great many years but it appears you’ve got one loose about the Sanctuary proper. They’re rather fond of heat and I know James is a stickler for steam power, the old fashioned idiot, so I imagine you’ll find it curled up in the basement. We’ll suit up and go capture it.”

She said it with perfect authority, if she was used to changing from her flowing blouses and heels straight into boots and leather without so much as a thought and Declan scrubbed a hand back over his hair, stalling for time while he thought that through. Watson had taken him on since his own health didn’t let him go in for as much of the physical as he’d like and Declan was happy to take over that role for him. Still, Magnus was untested (as far as Declan knew, anyway) and he was a little hesitant about giving her the go ahead to head up a retrieval without Watson’s express permission.

Some second in command he was turning out to be, if he couldn’t make a decision as simple as this.

Old City, 2010

“Cheeky bastard!”

The break in his arm still twinged a hell of a lot but it was nothing he hadn’t been able to deal with in twelve some odd years working in the network. Besides, the satisfaction of handing Wexford his arse with Magnus by his side had been plenty to override what lingering pain he had from getting his own arse not so delicately handed to him by the Abnormal the night before. It seemed most of his memories with Magnus had something to do with giant lizards and he wondered if that meant on her next birthday they ought to get sauced and watch Godzilla. He tossed that aside; Magnus favored big, sweeping romantic epics from what he remembered and Godzilla definitely didn’t fall into that category.

“Someone needed to show that tosser what was what. I’m just glad you had the chance to.” He lowered his voice, tone a hell of a lot more tender than it should be when talking to a colleague.

“There’s nobody I want to work under other than you, Helen. Watson would have been all right, if he’d stepped in for you temporarily or something, but I’d have turned it all over if the choice was Wexford or nothing. Can’t stand for that, someone who wants to abuse the power that keeps us all safe. He’s bloody mad with a Napoleon complex to boot."

Magnus shot him a quick glance, eyes narrowing just a little as if she could assess him the way Watson always had, or the way her own protégé did now, all taking in the minutiae at the expense of the big picture. Declan shook his head and took her elbow with his good hand, leading her back out of the conference room and down to the labs. They had work to do and whether she liked it or not, he was going to assist. Zimmerman being out of sorts had taken a toll on all of them, had affected team morale immensely, and had Magnus keeping long nights and furrowing her brow until Declan was pretty sure it’d stick that way.

“You fancy Zimmerman, don’t you?”

Magnus looked up, eyes wide in shock and cheeks coloring with the faintest of blushes. That was answer enough for Declan; hardly had to be a profiler or a deductive genius to know he’d hit the nail on the head with that guess. She rolled her eyes in an attempt to deflect and nodded, murmuring softly enough under her breath that Declan had to lean in to hear her, cheek turned toward her lips.

“More than I should, really. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, no, but the first time with my own protégé.”

Declan laughed a little at that, but it rang a little hollow; It’d been him once in Zimmerman’s shoes, the new puzzle, the new fascination. Still, the way she looked when she talked about him…he wasn’t entirely sure it was the same.

“He’s clueless, isn’t he?” She nodded.

“Won’t be for long. I sure wasn’t.”

London, 1998

“If you’ll hold still, it’ll hurt less.”

Declan gritted his teeth and bit into a towel, the cotton drying his lips and doing very little to take his mind off the blinding pain in his shoulder. Damned basilisk had swiped at him as he’d gone down under the tranqs and dislocated the joint. It already had an ugly bruise forming and as delicate and soft as Magnus’s hands were, he didn’t want them anywhere near his shoulder when she was bracing them like that and shifting misplaced joints back into socket. That done, he ripped the towel from his mouth and sipped at the water she had sitting on a tray at his bedside, popping two of the pills she’d placed there and shaking his head slowly.

“Thought you said you were experienced with this sort of thing.”

Magnus’s face went hot with a blush and even with the pain, Declan found himself watching as it streaked down her neck and past the scoop of her shirt. Pale as she was, she had to blush all over. That, combined with the smattering of freckles her neckline revealed was enough to bring thoughts of Helen Magnus naked to the forefront, pain and discomfort shoved aside for the time being. Best treatment ever, in Declan’s opinion.

“I am. I also apprehended the last one with a full team of six. I think, for only two of us, we didn’t do a half bad job.”

She winced a little and bit her lip before touching his hand lightly. “I am terribly sorry about the shoulder, though. Is there anything I can do to help?”

She lowered her lashes in a way that might have played silly or coy on another woman but on her played as straight seduction. Declan’s shoulder was a dimly throbbing memory and he reached out to take her hand, splaying it against his bare abdomen before finding his voice. He’d always been a hell of a flirt when it came to women and yet, with this woman, he didn’t seem to think he had anything to say that she hadn’t heard a million times over. Didn’t stop him from trying.

“Since dinner and drinks got a little squashed by the reptile downstairs, I think we can probably just fast forward to the after, if that’s all right with you? ‘Course, lady like you probably wants more than one date before she gets that far, right?”

He grinned wide and she laughed (giggled, really, but since she still had a sig sauer strapped to her thigh, Declan was not about to point that out), deft fingers tugging at his trousers and shorts before tossing them to the side. As an afterthought, it seemed, she crossed the infirmary and locked the double doors, shoving a chair beneath them for further protection. Declan quirked an eyebrow and she gave him an awkward little look.

“James has keys. I don’t want him bounding in on us unexpectedly.”

Declan took in a sharp breath as she stripped, no trace of modesty written across her features. Maybe the life or death situation with the basilisk had made her bold or maybe he’d pegged her wrong, but the blush he’d seen earlier was nowhere to be found. Magnus walked with a confidence that could only have been born of several lifetimes of experience and Declan hoped he could live up to that. He was still green in the network, green to this life, because it wasn’t just a job, and she had a wealth and breadth of experience he’d never even get close to.

She straddled him gently, trying her best not to jostle his injured shoulder, and Declan rued the fact that he only had one hand to explore with given the other was still strapped into his sling. This probably wasn’t exactly how the Hippocratic oath had been written, but he couldn’t find any harm in it when Magnus was hot and tight around him, eyes closed and breath hitching a little as he slid his left thumb from the soft skin of her hip to rub where they joined, slow little circles over her clitoris meant to tease and not satisfy.

“Get on with it,” she whimpered, squeezing her thighs around his hips and crying out plaintively as he slid the hand busy between her legs up along her rib cage before cupping her breast, thumb mimicking its movements on her nipple now as she slid her own hand down to take over for his at her clitoris. It was fast and messy, neither of them quiet enough to stave off rumors at the breakfast table the next morning, but Declan didn’t care, so long as it wasn’t the last time.

It hadn’t been, but only because she’d stayed an extra two weeks to play catch up with Watson and when she’d run out of invented work to do, she’d bid him goodbye as quickly as she’d said hello.

Old City, 2010

“Knew you’d figure it out, Magnus. Always had a knack for that.”

They were having tea in her office, the pot settled comfortably between them and cups steaming. Tea seemed like a security blanket, a way to keep their hands and mouths occupied while Magnus filled him in about Zimmerman’s condition and the memories they’d ended up unlocking. Her eyes lit up when she talked about him, lit up in a way that Declan hadn’t really seen before. He wished Watson were here; Watson would know what it meant, to see her so animated and so light, but Declan had to guess.

He hoped, for Zimmerman’s sake, that he wasn’t just a passing fad. Declan and Magnus had settled into a deep friendship over the years with a hint of attraction and lust brimming beneath the surface, but he’d never had any illusions that he was more than a few nights of fun spread over the course of a month or two. Helen Magnus was an enigma that he’d never been able to puzzle out but Zimmerman was sharper than him, in a lot of ways. Maybe he’d be successful if he took a crack at it.

Because when Helen Magnus loved you, it was like having the sun turned on you full force. Took a hell of a long time to live without it, once you had a taste.

London, 1998

The twin sized infirmary bed was hardly big enough for the both of them but they managed, Magnus curled along his side with her head resting on Declan’s chest, Declan’s hand lazily in her hair.

“Are you happy with this?” he asked, voice low and thick from exhaustion and drugs. Magnus made a little satisfied noise in the back of her throat and nodded, curls tickling Declan’s neck.

“While it lasts, certainly.”

He hoped it did.


End file.
